Section » People
“A beautiful bowl of glory”: Rancho Gordo’s Steve Sando on beans, trade, and the tortilla project
Steve Sando (right) with Félix Martinez Gomez and his family, near Cuicatlan, Oaxaca. They grow chilhuacle chiles, essential to so many Oaxacan dishes but rare now thanks to several years of disturbed weather patterns. International trade can wreak havoc on small farmers and the global food culture: impoverishing peasants, destroying old ways of cooking,
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Jimmy Stewart, cults, and a lot of broken glass: Remembering Straus Family Creamery’s opening day
By Michael Straus Pictures from opening night at Straus Family Creamery, February 4, 1994. (That's me with the goatee.) Straus Family Creamery recently turned 17, and I started thinking back to those crazy times. In 1989, my older brother Albert, who’d been managing the farm and doing some pretty
Q&A with Michele Simon — activist, attorney, badass
It's always fun to talk with someone who has such a sense of purpose that she doesn't feel the need to make nice. Michele Simon is one of those people. Let me be clear: Simon, a public health attorney for the Marin Institute, and author of Appetite
Grow vacancies: Gene Fredericks is thinking inside the city’s big box
They're the bane of urban and suburban areas alike: the vacant, boarded-up K-Marts and Home Depot Expos, squatting like concrete cowpies amidst a landscape of weedy parking lots. But where most people
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Cooking outside my comfort zone, Part 2: Fresh chickpeas
Last week, I vowed to escape my farmers market rut and cook outside my comfort zone in honor of National
When push comes to chèvre at Lucky Penny Creamery
Before Local Roots Market opened late last year, we expected gaps in the products offered. One specific category of products –- cheese –- kept us from limiting our definition of "local" to "within 100 miles" as we weren't sure how many cheesemakers we
Chicken expert Gail Damerow answers newbie questions
Cluck, cluck, cluck. Bwaak! These are not sounds I expect to hear on a stroll in my North Oakland, Calif. neighborhood -- the usual soundtrack is more like thumping bass, sirens, and the rattle of fast-food paper bags. And yet chickens are pecking in backyards on practically every block, in converted
Must read: Temple Grandin two-part interview
Eats, chutes, and leaves: The well-known expert on humane slaughter dishes up several choice nuggets about how size and line speed aren't the determining factors when it comes to whether a slaughterhouse is "good" or "bad." What's important "is whether people care....There were some that were like the
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Why Anthony Bourdain thinks Jamie Oliver is a hero
Kid-food confidential: Anthony Bourdain may love foie gras, loathe Alice Waters and vegetarians, and enjoy tipping other sacred sustainable-foodie cows, but a recent excerpt from his new memoir, "Medium
Q&A with John Scharffenberger: First wine, then chocolate, and now … tofu?
Before founding the chocolate company for which he became famous, John Scharffenberger made California sparkling wine. In both cases, he was one of the first
Two recipes – and lots of opinions – from ‘Farmers Market Desserts’ author Jennie Schacht
Summer fruits from the farmers market are the supermodels of the produce world. Just like Heidi Klum doesn't need makeup
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Ethicurean’s Marc interviewed on Berkeleyside
Marc my words: Ethicurean co-editor Marc Rumminger talks about which cookbook authors and local-food purveyors he admires for an interview on Berkeley Bites. His personal blog, Mental Masala, was recently named a blog
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Ethicurean nominated for Treehugger Best of Green award!
The Ethicurean has been nominated for a TreeHugger.com Best of Green award, in the Food & Health category. The Best of Green Awards recognize "the people, companies
Food & Wine magazine sins against the monkfish
A monkfish (Wikimedia Commons) In the January 2010 issue of Food & Wine magazine,
Scorched pastures and lost birds at Soul Food Farm
The Bay Area's well-known, much-loved Soul Food Farm was devastated by a fire last night, I learned this morning from a heartbreaking email sent to friends by Soul Food's Alexis
